The New York Times conveniently picks today to run a hit piece on Bill Halter. It’s rife from top to bottom with misinformation. One “Lara Bergthold, a left-wing political consultant” is quoted, who worked with Halter on the 2003 Wes Clark campaign:

“The one thing that united the campaign was dislike of Bill Halter,” Ms. Bergthold said. “He was the only person I know of that left the campaign not of his own volition.”

Wes Clark is, without question, one of the most despised candidates of all time by his political staff. The only person she knows of that “left the campaign not of his own volition?” Try the entire draft Clark staff, which instantly got the boot once the DC professional consultant class (of which Ms. Bergthold is one) came in.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a mark of pride if those people didn’t like Halter,” says one former Draft Clark blogger, who was also fired. “The only thing that united the campaign was how dishonest and fucked up they were…The bloggers who put forward Clark were pushed out of the campaign instantly by DC hacks who didn’t like bloggers, and didn’t like progressives. Who promptly destroyed Wes Clark. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who says the campaign was unified against them was my guy.”

Did anyone at the New York Times even bother to fact check this article? . . .

Senator Lincoln, a two-term Democrat, had been judged too conservative, and her critics found a willing alternative in Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, whom they hailed as a “true progressive.”

Actually, I spoke with the author of the piece, Shaila Dewan. I told her that when Accountability Now was acting as a bridge between Halter’s local Arkansas support and national organizations, we were true to the Accountability Now charter which said that a candidate has to reflect the values of their constituents. We explicitly and repeatedly said that Halter was no flaming liberal, but that he did have considerable local support and we felt he would serve the interests of the community better than Lincoln.

To the best of my knowledge, that’s the perspective of the national groups that answered the call of Arkansas constituents for help countering Lincoln’s $3 million in corporate PAC contributions. Did they interview even one of those starry-eyed groups on the record who said that they thought Halter was “true progressive?” And if so, why weren’t they quoted directly?

Ms. Bergthold worries that the groups that have poured millions of dollars into his campaign might not know what they are getting. Compared with Mrs. Lincoln, a senator for 12 years, Mr. Halter is a political cipher, with no voting record and several chapters of his history unexamined.

As opposed to Blanche Lincoln, who is virulently anti-union and in the tank for the banks? You’ll have to explain to me why the New York Times would take the word of a member of a concern troll for the professional DC political class who quite frankly doesn’t know shit about Bill Halter or his relationship to any of these groups.

Here’s Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times: “I’m not sure the unions and liberal groups backing him are necessarily convinced of true-blue progressive tendencies as much as they are sure his tendencies on some issues are better than Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s.”

With union firepower behind him, Mr. Halter finished only two points behind Mrs. Lincoln in the May 18 primary, forcing her into a runoff.

Another canard sure to hurt Halter in the general — his success is due to “union firepower.” Again, I sent Shaila Dewan a link to Halter’s FEC reports two days ago. The most recent filing shows that of the $3 million Halter had raised through March 31, only $169,000 came from union PAC money. Nearly all of the donations made directly to the campaign come from small-dollar donors. While the unions have made significant outside expenditures, you can’t run a campaign on fumes. And it is undeniable that the money fueling Bill Halter’s campaign does not come from the unions.

And then it’s off to the races, with one hit job after another:

“His ambition, though, has disenchanted a long list of former allies….”

Really? He’s running a contentious political challenge to a powerful incumbent, a sitting U.S. Senator who is Chairman of the Agricultural Committee, and there are people who will say bad things about him. Go figure.

Mr. Halter’s biography says he grew up in North Little Rock, the son of a nurse and a small- business man. His father did not actually own a business, but ran the mortgage arm of a bank.

Saying your father is a “small business man” because he worked for the mortgage arm of a bank is some kind of evil fabrication? Where did that come from, Blanche Lincoln’s oppo sheet?

[H]e was hired to lead the new Arkansas Institute, a now defunct organization financed by wealthy businessmen like Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. To preserve the institute’s nonpartisan identity, Mr. Halter was hired on the condition that he not get involved with Bill Clinton’s incipient presidential campaign, recalled Walter Smiley, then the chairman of the institute’s board.

A non-partisan institute must legally be non-partisan, and directing the political activities of your employees outside of their jobs is expressly partisan activity. I hope the IRS sends a nice bill to Mr. Smiley for all the taxes his organization evaded.

But Mr. Halter took to disappearing from the office in the afternoons, and staff members who disliked their boss followed him to the Clinton campaign office, Mr. Smiley said.

“Mr. Smiley said.” Based on the word of one guy with a political agenda, the New York Times, the paper of record, prints that Bill Halter was sneaking around and that anonymous staff members didn’t like him followed him. Halter denies it. Rather than get a confirming source, they run with what “one angry old dude” says?

Finally, after an intense courtship by national liberal groups, he challenged Mrs. Lincoln…. But when he is asked about his union support, he responds that he has nothing to do with campaigning by outside groups.

The national unions quite nearly did not back Halter. They were afraid of risking the cloture vote on EFCA that Blanche Lincoln was privately telling them she’d cast. Harry Reid had promised to bring EFCA to the floor after health care was over. If Scott Brown had not beaten Martha Coakley in late January, destroying the chance of getting 60 votes in the Senate, they probably would not have risked jeopardizing EFCA by backing Halter. By that time there was already strong support for Halter in Arkansas, led by local activists, bloggers and community leaders that national groups tapped into. Although the author is working hard this week to promote the story that the unions are driving this cart, they aren’t. They have their own reasons to want Blanche Lincoln out of office.

It’s hard to know whether content or the timing of the piece are more suspect, but appearing as it does on a hotly contested election day it does not rise to the level of responsible journalism.

41 Responses
to “NYT Celebrates Primary Day With a Halter Hit Piece”

The NYT, as always, sucks. As to the substance of the article, if one can call it that, the issue in this campaign is not Halter. The issue is corporate suck-up Dems. From office holders to operatives, they need to receive a message from the voters that we won’t take any more of this crap. Either Democrat up or get out.

Jane,
Thank you so much for the post. I was wondering how things were going in Arkansas.
When you said “The NYT conveniently picks today to run a hit piece…” I would humbly suggest that this was in the works for more than a few days and considering the source of the article and the few slanted quotes, it is just another hatchet job.
Go Halter!

[Reporter Shaila] Dewan used the sex scandal of former South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford as an excuse to suggest, without substance like emails or phone messages, that the claims by blogger Will Folks fit a pattern of sexual bad behavior in the Palmetto State: “Scandal Rattles Politics In South Carolina, Again.” The text box to Wednesday’s print story worked in the party identification: “A blogger says he had an affair with a G.O.P. candidate for governor.”

Maybe the old gray hag kept Jason Blair out of sight to act as fact checker. He couldn’t do any harm there. The NYTimes, great for lining a bird cage, but abominable as a source of legitimate information. “All the news that fits the status quo.”

Does anyone know whether or not the Garland County polling places were limited to just the two mentioned earlier this week or that there was enough pressure on the County Election Commission Chairman Charles Tapp to open more up for today’s election?
I would call his attempts as “Voter Suppression” especially as reported earlier that some voters in that county would have to travel up to 20 miles to cast their vote.

I would call it the same thing. I have no idea if there are more polling places open than announced but I doubt it. In for a penny, in for a pound. This guy is already in trouble or would be if Orahma wasn’t backing Lincoln and had a shred of integrity.

Giving thanks for blogs like this for access to alternative views. Finding the truth in this money soaked corporate culture gets harder and harder.

I’ll vote for a prick who does what he says he will do over a smooth talking schmoozer who triangulates, lies and screws her constituents any day. May this be the day Arkansas gives sister Blanche her walking papers.

And to the “strategists” who say it’s stupid to put up a candidate left of Lincoln in a conservative state, I say stop treating the people of Arkansas like they’re stupid, stupid.

It’s hard to know whether content or the timing of the piece are more suspect, but appearing as it does on a hotly contested election day it does not rise to the level of responsible journalism.

That’s how hit pieces are done, at least when they truly are hit pieces, as opposed to merely badly done journalism. There’s no time to answer the charges, but just enough for the local papers in AR to run the story.

The big problem both candidates are likely to have today is getting people to vote for a second time in a month. This is an attempt to make Halter’s supporters a bit less enthusiastic, I think. The guy’s a jerk, they’re saying, why go to the trouble of voting for him?

The people of Arkansas liked Halter well enough to elect him Lt. Gov. so he is hardly someone who just popped up and decided to run for the Senate. He has lots of cred there and he has a really good chance of removing Blanche from our sight.

That’s the Rahm Emanuel theory of candidacy: Be more Republican than your Republican opponent. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, this is still held up as conventional wisdom. That brings in to play your statement about voting for the prick who does what he says as opposed to the liar. If there are no alternatives and both major party candidates are trying to out right wing each other, who will people vote for? The one who is supposed to be right wing or the one who anomalously isn’t?

This is Obama’s paper. He favors their reporters with exclusives, Rahm is on the phone every day several times a day, and then they run a Halter hit piece?

Color me unsurprised. If any other paper behaved this way, the Times would analyze the outlets’ scruples six ways to Sunday — day of the primary, unsourced allegations, agenda-filled operatives on the record, opaque misunderstanding of the Clark campaign — but since it’s the Grey Lady herself who fucked up here, expect crickets.

Most Arkansas voters do not read the New York Times. There is an agenda here based on the assumption that he is going to win today and wanted to undermine his general election chances with somebody who does read the New York Times. I wonder who those folks might be. Big donors maybe?

There is no doubt in my mind that Halter lost. And there’s no doubt in my mind that if elected, once Halter started taking votes Jane didn’t like, she’d throw him under the bus. Or maybe post a photo of him in blackface.